ROTHGEB: Howser was one in a million

His schtick was Tennessee corn pone and at the top of his vocabulary were words like “Wow!” and “Whoa!” and “Oh, my gosh!”

And with a microphone in his hand and a camera in his face, Huell Howser could do a heckuva lot of good in just a half-hour.

Howser, whose down-home style made him a television star in California, died Monday at the age of 67.

Not having lived here for long, I only got to know of his work a few years ago. I’m sorry I didn’t pay a little closer attention. The man was quite good in a very nutty sort of way.

And it’s times like these when it’s nice to have YouTube. You can find a lot of his work just by calling up his name there. Much of it comes from his California’s Gold series that runs on the Public Broadcasting System.

For instance, there was his televised visit to a backyard farm in Whittier in which he profoundly cackled, “It’s a backyard farm and it’s almost like it’s a farm in the backyard.”

The high point was when his high-pitch voice bellowed, “Louise, you gotta get a shot of this!” while shooting water from a simple water fountain. All the while the young, ambitious owners of the farm were trying to get him to lay off the water, for the sake of conservation.

It’s very funny. Fans of Albert Brooks would love it.

Or there’s the time he visited the world-famous Bagdad Café in Newberry Springs and found on that day, at least, it wasn’t very famous. One of the only customers that day was a 98-year-old, coffee-drinking coot who claimed he was still an active Army general.

He also took a trip to Mono Lake in the Sierras, where he was told that, roughly translated, the area was at one-time inhabited by a tribe known as “People of the Flies.”

Sure enough, the place was infested with millions of flies, to which Howser quietly said, “Hold on, I’m having a fly experience here.”

He also had a thing for waste. He once took a trip to the Farragon Islands near San Francisco where he spent much of the day dodging “seagull poop” and on another visit to another spot he opened his show by saying “I’m standing on the top of a whole field of horse manure.”

That was Huell Howser -- a true character if ever there was one.

And if you look hard enough, you’ll find that as part of a series sponsored by the California Redevelopment Association, he even rode into Old Town Temecula one day. He gushed over it as much as he would the sight of flies mating on the palm of his hand or if he was singing the praises of an avocado-eating dog.

He spent most of that day walking around Old Town with John Meyer, who at that time was Temecula’s director of redelopment but is no longer with the city.

Howser was as enthusiastic as ever that day -- laughing and shouting and spewing “Wow!” all over the place. There also is another funny thing about that video. It taught me more about Temecula than I had ever known before.

Beneath all that fervor and all that guffaw, Howser was a teacher. He had a knack for learning and talking about history that few can equal. He could make even the most mundane seem pretty important.

To watch the Old Town Temecula video, go to www.cityoftemecula.org/Temecula/visitors/californiacommunities.htm .

If you have an idea for a column or know someone who would be interested to feature, call Jim Rothgeb at (951) 676-4315, ext. 2621, or jrothgeb@californian.com.